Prof Jennifer Robinson has been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant to explore ambitious research ideas related to global challenges. In this project, Prof Robinson will investigate how the future of African cities reflects transnational processes based on sovereign, developmental and private investment in large-scale urban developments. Three cities will be studied, Accra (Ghana), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and Lilongwe (Malawi). The transnational framework will allow a new perspective on urban governance challenges, focused on projects, and will seek to treat African experiences as the basis for wider insights into global urban politics. The project will build African-based research capacity in urban studies, with African collaborators and early career researchers in the team. With Prof Robinson, this will be led, by Prof Philip Harrison (University of Witwatersrand), Professor George Owusu (University of Ghana) and Dr Evance Mwathunga (University of Malawi), together with post-doc and PhD researchers in each city.